Mostly Harmless

Had X-Mas #1 last weekend with the parents. The haul was pretty impressive; it took me three trips to bring all the stuff in the from the car. Loot included two sets of tools & a kick-ass, 18-volt cordless drill; one of those portable air compressor/battery jumper things; and a freakin’ huge King-sized down comforter (oh yeah). The ‘rents got everything they asked for, as is the custom.

X-Mas #2 is happening Saturday about 135 miles south of here. Since I am such a good cousin/nephew, and haven’t seen most of that group of relatives in about a decade, _and_ since one Uncle gets me something every year — despite me being 36 now — I bought payback gifts to the tune of “a couple hundred bucks” for the four cousins and four aunts and uncles that will be there. Just finished wrapping all of that stuff… only used three different wrapping papers for 10 boxes ‘cuz I’m a slacker. (I had Amazon wrap all my Dad’s stuff so I only had to wrap two boxes for X-Mas #1, that was saweet!)

I’ve got a vague idea of how to get to my uncle’s place. Mapquest says 2 1/2 hours for 145 miles (135 south, 10 “left”). I say I can do it faster. I’m going down and coming right back, and the _other_ relatives can just deal with me not being there on Sunday for X-Mas #3.

These guys: Shoemakers Candies, are dealers of candy so addictive it should be considered a controlled substance. The local Cub Foods store sells Divinity from Shoemaker’s, with a healthy markup, in the bakery section. It’s about $7 for a smallish package that is barely enough to last the drive home from the store. The impending dental bills will be significant as well — you can feel the cavities forming in your teeth within seconds of taking the first mouth-watering bite. But, man, it’s good shit.

I tried making my own from some random recipe… didn’t turn out nearly so well (i.e. addictive). It’s probably for the best though, since any recipe that starts out with “3 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of light corn syrup” isn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of “low cal.”

I pilfered wrote a VB application today. Upwards of 20 lines of code. It does essentially the same thing as “curl -o somefile http://some.url/foo.”

Differences include: the VB app is 20 times longer than the equivalent curl statement; the VB app has a GUI with a button to press (purely for testing purposes); the app has the URL and file path hardcoded; the VB IDE is a steaming pile of crap.

Desirable because: the VB app does not require “putting shareware” on a production box. And by “shareware*” they mean curl. Yes, curl. C-U-f*cking-R-L. No. Really. The same open source curl that ships as a standard utility on most UNIX-flavored operating systems. Only reason it isn’t already on the server in question is ‘cuz it’s a PeeCee running Windows. (* I’m told that “shareware” appears to be a generic term for “not commercially purchased/supported”)

And did I mention that the VB IDE is a steaming pile of crap? IDE stands for (pick one): (a) Integrated Development Environment, (b) Insipid Development Environment, (c) Idiotically Designed Environment, or (d) I Desire Execution (which is also a pun).

I’m sure I will have many occasions to rant about the IDE so I’ll save some vitriol for later.